Strained Peas
by DancingPhalangess
Summary: Family dinner brings up some unsettling memories. Emma runs, Regina follows, and they finally have a conversation.


**A kind of cheer up fic for AJ. Even though it's not cheerful.**

The smell hit her before she saw what was on the plate. Her stomach rolled. She tried to eat around them, but even the sight of them on her plate made her grit her teeth so she didn't throw up her lunch. Emma looked up from her own dinner to see everyone else tucking in without a thought, as if it was any normal meal, and to them of course it was. Her mother talked to Henry about school; allegedly, they were starting a new project on the planets. David was practising his swordsmanship with a knife while Regina glared at them.

Emma looked down at her plate and felt another heave in her stomach. Even though she was sure Hook was still watching her, she lifted her hand to hover over her peas, but trying to vanish them only succeeded in sending the whole plate flying to the end of the table where it shot off and shattered at Regina's feet.

She raised one perfect eyebrow. "Did you think the floor might be hungry?"

The table was silent as everyone stared at the mess, a mixture of surprise and confusion weighing down the quiet. "Um, I guess practising magic at the dinner table wasn't the best move."

"Really?" Regina again.

"Aye, never mind. At least you don't have to eat your veg now." Killian gave her his lopsided half grin and Emma felt herself return it. Yes, at least she didn't have to eat the peas.

But with one wave of Regina's hand, the plate was back in front of her and as full as it had been before she sent it shooting off of the table.

"Floor germs," Emma protested, but with another flick of her hand, Regina solved that problem.

Emma glared at her.

"Eat up."

Slowly, as if she were preparing herself to slice into someone's brain, she cut off a slither of her chicken. She flung her gaze to the far corner of the room so she didn't have to look at the peas as she chewed, hating that they were there at all.

"Mix your peas with the sauce, it's delicious," Snow advised her, as if she were five years old instead of a grown woman of thirty two.

Emma doubted they would be so delicious when they shot back up her throat again. On the bright side, it'd probably put everyone else off of them for life. She sliced of another tiny piece of chicken and scraped it off the fork with her teeth. Everyone else returned to their own meals, except for Snow and Regina. Her mother with annoying concern and Regina with distaste, but there was something else there too. Something even worse than Snow's mother-bird-watching-her-baby-try-to-fly-and-fall-out-of-the-nest look.

"Excuse me, Prince Charming, do you mind not teaching my son to play with knives?"

"We aren't playing with knives, we're sword fighting." David sounded like she'd just insulted his new haircut. "This is very skilful work." He proved it by slipping past Henry's defence move and 'stabbing' him in the chest.

Henry died across his empty plate.

David raised his fork high in the air and declared: "Victory is mine!" before Henry sprung back from the dead and thrust his knife into his grandfather's ribs.

"Never take your eye from your opponent," he said, wisely.

"Looks like you managed to pass on some genes anyway, Regina."

She smiled sarcastically at David, but there was a hint of pride in there too that no one missed.

Come on, Emma told herself. They're just peas. Eat the damn things. But she couldn't even make herself pick them up on the fork. Or look at them.

She had an audience again. Regina arching her eyebrows. "For God's sake, they're just peas. Are you five?" The rest of the table turned their attention to her. Henry looking amused that he wasn't the one under his mother's watchful eye for once and David, too, pleased that the attention had turned away from him.

"You eat them then," Emma snapped, sweeping her hand over the plate so the peas flew off of it towards Regina. She stopped them with a lazy flick of her own hand.

"Emma!" gasped Snow.

Henry sniggered and Charming, too, had to hide his grin behind his hand.

"You normally have a far healthier appetite than this," Snow commented, looking at her still full plate, now minus the peas, which were scattered all over Regina's end of the table. She tried to say it casually, as if she weren't prying, but not even Henry was fooled.

Emma pushed the rest of her food away, giving up the pretence. "I'm just not hungry," she muttered, hoping it could be left at that.

But of course her mother wouldn't let it go. "That's not like you. Are you sick?" She hovered halfway off her seat, debating whether to go over there or not, but David put a hand on her elbow in gentle warning.

Emma was halfway off her seat too. "I'm fine, can we go back to the sword fighting?"

"I can teach the lad a few dirty tricks," Killian offered and Emma shot him a grateful smile, which he returned with more warmth than she'd had from anyone but her parents. She watched Hook as he picked up his knife and began a complicated motion, swinging it through the air a little too enthusiastically and accidently hitting the table where the blade dented the wood.

With some more eye rolling, Regina fixed it. "Remind me again why I continue to come here and eat with a bunch of nine year olds."

Henry grinned at her. "Because you love me."

"For my dashing smile and rugged good looks," chimed in Hook.

Regina glared at him and smiled back at her son. "Now if only your other mother would follow your fine example." She nodded to Henry's empty plate.

Emma shot her a filthy look, but didn't retort. Her stomach was still rolling and she didn't want to open her mouth too much until the peas were well and truly gone.

David stood up, collecting everyone's plates as he did so. "Dessert!" He announced.

And despite the nausea, Emma knew she would eat it. It was an old habit, one that was taking too long to die. She'd probably sneak down later as well for a midnight snack. Especially as her plate was still almost full with her uneaten dinner. But even while her father brought out two different kinds of pie and a box of doughnuts, Emma wished it could be over. She wished she could just take the doughnuts and maybe Hook upstairs and get away from the staring. From Regina's glare.

She arched an eyebrow as Emma reached for a Bear Claw. _(Don't you dare touch that, it's not for you/nothing else until you've eaten what's on your plate/come on Emma, we're waiting)._ She shut her eyes for the briefest moment and when she opened them again, Regina's eyebrow was back down. A hint of the other expression was there.

Emma took a bite of the Bear Claw so she didn't have to look.

Until she heard Regina mutter something under her breath. "What was that?" she said, loudly.

Snow and David looked between them with an oh-Jesus-I-thought-we'd-managed-to-dodge-this-part-of-her-growing-up expression.

"I said you eat like a child," Regina repeated, her expression hard and unwavering. Just the kind she would have given Henry when he didn't want to eat broccoli.

Anger and something much more painful twisted a knot in her heart and memories exploded inside her head: fosterparentswatchingheracrossthetablematchingglaressmirkscleanplates. Sharp, intense and with a focus that had barely been there when she had lived it. Emma gasped and stumbled, only realising then she was on her feet and her legs crumpled beneath her but her chair was there for her to fall into. It wasn't her foster parents staring at her now, but everyone else. Confused and maybe a little relieved that jets of light weren't shooting across the table.

Except for Regina, who was looking at her like she was a hamster trapped between the bars of its cage.

Without waiting for part two of the anger and questions, Emma jumped from her seat, ignoring the weakness in her legs and the way the walls dipped in for long enough to close the door on the watching eyes of her audience.

* * *

At the dock, her legs buckled, but she didn't feel the splinters tear at the knees of her jeans, or the one that embedded itself into her palm. Memories were pouring into her head now, not just the one she'd shown Regina, but all of them.

 _A high chair with straps where her wrists and ankles would go, a bottle of whiskey pressed against her chest as she wandered down the aisles of a convenience store, a face puce and screaming and too close, the burning tip of a cigarette crisping her skin, a furnished room with a plush carpet and a four poster canopy that held the darkest nightmare of all and the peas, the bowl of frozen peas that got stuck in her throat and made her mouth so cold she cried._

"Emma."

 _A cold chair in a police station, a uniform all but wrenching her arm out of its socket as he took her prints, warnings about juvenile detention and a caution marred on her record, the sharp stab of a heeled boot slamming into her leg_ "Emma-" _"You bitch do you want them to come nosing around here? Because if they do I'll give you all the fucking food you want, rammed down your throat until you choke on it."_

"Look at me."

There was a weird sensation in her head, a tugging through the images, like a curtain going down after a show. It didn't make them stop but it was enough to jolt her, to make her feel something else, hands on her face, a little too tight and urgent, moving down to her shoulder, a push-

Emma gasped and water poured into her mouth and down her throat. She coughed before she went under, her hands grappling for the leg of the dock, her legs struggling to remember how to keep herself afloat. When her head broke the surface she coughed again, the water stuck in her throat but there was air. Real life air and a pole in her fist and waves lapping around her neck and Regina with her hand out, ready to yank her from the sea.

"What-the-hell-?" Emma gasped between coughs. It was obvious how she had managed to find herself in the sea and Regina's slightly guilty expression confirmed it.

"Your instinct for survival overrode your lack of control over the spell," she explained. "You had to let go of it to concentrate on swimming."

Still pissed, Emma pushed Regina's hand aside and used the dock to pull herself out of the water. It took her more than one attempt, her body was weak and shaking from the energy the spell had sapped from her. As soon as she was on the dock again she felt a warmth that seemed to travel to the very tips of her fingers. Her hair curled fresh and dry around her shoulders and her clothes unstuck to her skin. Some of her anger wavered, just slightly.

"Has it stopped?" Regina asked, softly.

Emma nodded, hating her tone. She had never meant to show her that. Her foster parents, a bowl of frozen peas and the promise that she wouldn't get anything else to eat until she'd cleared what was in the bowl, even when she puked the first half back up. She'd learnt over the next six days to control it when she stomach clenched and shoved, a useful skill for being pregnant in prison. She'd been in that placement for more than two months before she was removed, nineteen pounds lighter and constantly dizzy.

Water lapped against the dock, sending a soft spray over her shoes and ankles. Emma had a sudden urge to take them off and let her bare feet hang in the water. She felt a nudge at her elbow and turned around to see Regina holding out a box of Bear Claws. For a moment she wasn't sure what she was seeing, it was as strange as Archie offering to share a spliff in a session, so she took one warily.

"It's not poisoned," Regina sighed. "I just thought you might still be hungry."

"Right. I just won't take the apple jelly."

"Hilarious," she said, dryly, but Emma was sure she saw her fighting back a smile. She almost smiled herself as she bit into the doughnut. When she didn't instantly collapse, she took another bite.

For a while, Emma could only hear the waves and the gulls screeching before Regina drew a sharp breath beside her, like she was preparing herself to make a speech. "What is it?" she asked, without turning around. Whatever was going to happen now she didn't want to make eye contact for it.

"I'm sorry."

That was so unexpected that Emma almost did look at her, just to make sure it was still Regina beside her and not a body snatcher. "Sorry?" she repeated.

"For my part in...how you grew up." Although she sounded almost controlled, Emma could hear the cracks in Regina's voice. This was no easier for her to say than it was for Emma to hear it.

"Okay," she said. Because _it_ wasn't okay, but it was done and behind them and it was going to have to stay that way if she wanted to build any kind of relationship with anyone in this town. Especially her parents. And she was glad that Regina had said it. Glad that someone, finally, had admitted there was something wrong with what happened to her. Even Snow and David had wanted to do nothing but move on and act like the past twenty eight years hadn't happened.

Then she felt a pressure on her hand, Regina holding it, and before she could ask what she was doing, another memory came to her.

 _A classroom with rainbow displays and a picture of every child on the walls with something nice another classmate had said about them printed underneath. "Emma knows lots of cool thing and she can beat me at arm wrestling," hers read._

 _From across the desk her third grade teacher smiled at her and pushed a paper plate her way. Triangle sandwiches, fairy cakes and a perfectly cut apple. "If you ever forget lunch money again just come to me, okay?" The teacher smiled and Emma returned it, feeling a flicker she hadn't felt in so long. It was something like warmth. The security that someone cared about her. "Thanks."_

 _Miss Blanchard reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "You're welcome, Emma."_

 **Thanks for getting all the way to the end if you read this, I'd love to know what you thought.**


End file.
